Month: September 2022

VENTER EMBEDDED QUOTES. "The man-made genetic code also includes three quotes: "To live, to err, to fall, to triumph, and to recreate life out of life" from James Joyce; "see things not as they are but as they might be" from Robert Oppenheimer via the Ethical Culture School in New York City; and "what I cannot build, I cannot understand" from physicist Richard Feynman.” The first synthetic cell. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/synthetic-genome-cell/ View in LinkedIn

NINETY-NINE PERCENT FAILURES. "When you work on something for 15 years, it's a great sense of accomplishment. You can imagine 99 percent of your experiments fail for one reason or another. This, when it finally worked, we were more relieved than excited.” The first synthetic cell. http://edition.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/05/21/venter.qa/ View in LinkedIn

BLACK BOX. “The household appliance of the future. It is a box attached to a computer that would receive DNA sequences over the internet to synthesise proteins, viruses and even living cells. "We call it a Digital Biological Converter. And we have the prototype," says Venter.” https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/oct/13/craig-ventner-mars View in LinkedIn

DIGITAL VACCINE. “If there is a pandemic, everyone around you is dying and you cannot go outdoors, you can download the vaccine in a couple of seconds from the internet," he says. That digital file would allow DBCs in homes, hospitals and companies to "just spit out a loaded syringe". His researchers believe their current prototype is already capable of producing DNA precisely enough that it could be used as a vaccine.” https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/oct/13/craig-ventner-mars View in LinkedIn

BACK END. “In parallel to the development of the DBC, Venter's scientists are also working on a machine called the "digitised life sending unit", intended to complete his vision of an end-to-end system for biological teleportation.” (DBC = Digital Biological Converter). https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/oct/13/craig-ventner-mars View in LinkedIn

BIOLOGICAL TELEPORTATION. "Venter and Elon Musk are talking of using this technology to terraform Mars with 3D-printed earthly microbes. The whole thing boggles the imagination, of course, but Venter and Musk do have form for pulling off amazing feats." https://lnkd.in/dmr8MRR View in LinkedIn

PRINTING CELLS. “Looking further ahead, Venter intends DBCs to print living cells, using an automated and improved version of the process behind his 2010 breakthrough synthetic cell. Work on that is currently underway, with the focus on creating what he calls the "universal recipient cell", a kind of biological blank slate able to receive any synthetic genome and come to life.” (DBC = Digital Biological Converter). https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/oct/13/craig-ventner-mars View in LinkedIn

GENESIS. “Another common complaint about his 2010 work – that it shows the scientist is intent on "playing God", Venter seems happy to embrace. "In the restricted sense that we had shown with this experiment how God was unnecessary for the creation of new life, I suppose that we were.” https://lnkd.in/dmEGVWN View in LinkedIn

“PATHOLOGY OF COMPUTER VIRUSES. Computer viruses broadly meet the general criteria for artificial life, but this author does not think that they qualify as living.” https://books.google.com/books?id=_VLmBwAAQBAJ&pg=PA47&lpg=PA47&dq=computer+virus+metabolism&source=bl&ots=VZ5Xit6TPg&sig=2EBk5kG-yFSqUID0C-MnUht1dPc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi51qLC35fLAhUBcj4KHQW-B9AQ6AEIDDAB View in LinkedIn

COMPUTER VIRUSES LIVE. “British physicist Stephen Hawking says a computer virus fits the definition of a living system even though it has no metabolism of its own, and instead uses the metabolism of a host computer for its parasitic existence. "I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image," says Hawking.” https://lnkd.in/dS48jDJ View in LinkedIn